Pathogen Daze

April 8, 2020. 4:50 p.m. Decent day. To get out we go for a drive. We decide to tour the Kingdom of Richmond because it seems like years since we’ve been there. The “downtown” around No.3 road has become a nightmare of new–built concrete, steel and glass with just a few remaining dumpy little strip–malls. Once out of this it’s the same old Richmond, impressively flat and straight–as–a die wide roadways miles long. And you can still occasionally find deep, watery ditches on both sides of the road which is the reason some people used to call it Ditchmond. One is doomed in Richmond without a car.

We extended our adventure to the distant metropolis of Steveston and its multitude of new–built, low–rise row dwellings facing the sun–dappled middle arm of the Fraser River. I spent some time looking for more adjectives in a patch of grass while observing, of course, the two metre rule, and there were signs posted reminding us of it, but realized I’d brought more with me than I thought. You just have to luv these guys.

From Steveston we blustered our way into deep east Richmond on the charmingly named Blundell Road and its many curious, absurdly overbuilt forty room and eighty bathroom mega–houses. We’ve heard and read about them and here they are. Not a great deal of curb appeal but we only saw one with a fancy portico supported by twelve foot, fluted Corinthian columns, so that was good. I can see the guy saying, “No. They must be Corinthian columns! I don’t want any of this Tuscan nonsense.”

I’m reminded of the old Royal Canadian Air Farce joke. “Things are getting less worse more slowly.” The roadways in Stanley Park have been closed to traffic. We’ve been very wary in these interesting times of people doing stupid things with their cars on our currently low-traffic streets. Fewer cars seems to translate for some into thinking, “Hey, it’s interesting times! Normal rules don’t apply!” Right. If for these guys they ever have.

We’ve seen some of what we feel are these peculiar examples in our travels and that’s what closed down the park to cars, apparently, but we made the cut. We drove around Stanley Park as in days of yore two days ago for most of the same reasons Richmond happened today. We also had occasion to wonder about at least two congregations of human beings. They weren’t large but they weren’t hanging around keeping their distance from one another and we didn’t get the impression they were members of the same, pathogen-free households. We didn’t virtue signal. We drove on. We were going in the right direction.

Sidewalk Chalk in Deepest Dunbar

April 9. Yes, it’s today again. Always today. We can’t be anywhere else. Yesterday’s yesterday and tomorrow’s tomorrow. And this is today. We’ve got a yeast culture going. The boss has started it from scratch. Anybody out there ever do that in Home Ec.? Start a yeast culture? Anybody ever heard of Home Ec.? I never took Home Ec. I kind of learned to cook on my own. I started a yogurt culture once but never a yeast culture. I just don’t think it’s something that would have occurred to me as something to get excited about.

Yogurt was different. I’d discovered yogurt. Yogurt hadn’t been invented yet in the places I grew up. I was already in my mid twenties the first time I had yogurt. I think one or two people I was sharing a house with were buying yogurt and I helped myself to some of theirs when they weren’t around. It was plain yoghurt. I don’t recall the fat content or if it was even stated on the container in that era but I liked the yogurt. It was deceptively bland.

When I heard I could make my own yogurt from my own self–perpetuating yogurt culture and never have to buy yogurt again I wanted to try it. I set to and in just a couple of days here it was, a little dab of yogurt. I tried it. It was okay. It wasn’t long before the novelty of making little dabs of yogurt wore off and I also became worried about drawing attention to myself as some kind of weird, yogurt guy. From then on if I wanted yogurt I’d just buy it at the store like most people.

I’m quite interested in the yeast culture but have no plans to get personally involved in nurturing it along. The yeast culture’s name is “Yuri”. It was suggested that the culture is a living thing, like a pet, so why not give it a name? Yuri the yeast culture. Yuri Yeast then. Hi Yuri! How you doin’ in there? Yuri lives in a jar right now. It’s a medium sized round canning jar complete with lid. As a yeast culture you could do worse.

World 1,582,604 confirmed cases. Canada 19,773. United States 454.304. It’s not funny but it is a very interesting science experiment. Some good will come of it too. It’s only natural. We just don’t know when.